Interview with Rachel Pollack

Rachel’s classic, Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, is out this week in a 3rd edition, from Weiser Books. Having stood the test of time and delving deeply into the stories found in the images of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, it continues to be one of the best books for aspiring and experienced tarot readers. You can apply its wisdom to almost any deck that has pictures on all the cards because you will learn how to “see” what is in them. The photo shows Rachel having just flown in to Shanghai using her Tarot super-power. 

Interview with Rachel Pollack

Mary: Rachel, I met you in Amsterdam in the mid-1980s, not long after my first tarot book came out. You had already made a big splash with your first two books (now combined in one). We both have a 3rd edition of our early works published this year. How do you feel the tarot world has changed since your book first came out? What’s different about today’s students of tarot?

Rachel: Probably the biggest difference in the field is the vast number of decks on such a wide range of themes, using and molding the Tarot in ways that the old occult designers and artists, such as Waite and Smith, or Crowley and Harris, would never even have conceived.  First came the Pagan/Wiccan and feminist Tarots, then the wide range of cultural decks, and while all that continues–along with revivals of the older Marseille and Italian traditions–the cards have become a medium of artistic expression, and a way to embrace powerful themes and cultures.  None of this is new, of course.  We can look all the way back to the 15th century Sola-Busca, and later, the Vieville Tarot to see early artistic expressions, but it’s happening now in a way that’s unprecedented.  Diversity has become not just a theme but a way to open the Tarot up in images and meaning.  Today’s  students have access to all this, and start with such a banquet of Tarot’s possibilities.

Mary: For me, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom is astonishingly fresh even after all these years. I feel I get to know the true heart of a card, its inner life, its stories and not just basic meanings. What do you feel this book gives its readers that no other book seems to do?

Rachel:  First of all, thank you.  I’m honored that you say that.  When I began Seventy-Eight Degrees, I had a strong sense of who my audience might be.  I wanted to write for people who may or may not know anything of esoteric traditions, or mythology, or occult history, but had an openness and sensitivity to these ways of looking at life and symbolic images.  I was also aware that almost all previous works on Tarot (with some wonderful exceptions) fell into two categories.  First were the simple manuals for fortune-telling, with fixed but limited meanings.  Beyond that were the very detailed books of occult theory that were written for a very small and already advanced community–and pretty much opaque to everyone else.  I wanted to do a book that opened the Tarot up in a way that people could find their own lives in it, and at the same time learn about worlds beyond their experience.  Something else I did that I don’t think anyone had ever done before was to treat the Minor Arcana with same seriousness and consideration as the Major.  I did these things by delving into the pictures, making the images primary and looking beyond the symbols into their stories.

Mary: What advice would give newbies who are seeking to read the cards?

Rachel: I would say to try out various approaches and see what works best for you.  One person might find the strict interpretations and meanings inspires them to  reveal truths about people’s lives.  Someone else might ignore all the instructions and simply play with the pictures and what they seem to say in a given moment.  Above all, I would suggest that people treat the Tarot  not just as printed cards and a set of instructions, but rather as a living being.  The one thing I can for sure about the Tarot is that we will never come to the end of it.

Check out Rachel’s website and blog.